Pulaski boxes through the immigrant streets of Brooklyn

Set in the immigrant streets and tenements of Brooklyn, Jack Pulaski’s stories sparkle with incident, character, memory, and a touch of the surreal. In “Religious Instruction,” a widowed scripture teacher channels her passion into a retelling of the primal stories of the bible that transfixes her adolescent students: “When she marries again we will not hear these stories, not the same way.” “Music Story” sketches a chilling portrait of urban ethnic territoriality, while in “Father of the Bride,” a young Jew pursues the skeptical, profane and eccentric Carlos, seeking his daughter’s hand.

The St. Veronica Gig Stories, by Jack Pulaski [Cloth]

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Jack Pulaski has his turf, and the talent to work it.
—Andrei Codrescu

Get the book and read it. And then shower copies on everyone you know who still enjoys moving his or her eyes from left to right.
—Sven Birkets

Mr. Pulaski has a gift for combining the lyrical with the earthy
—Diane Cole, New York Times Book Review

The stories may be about a berserk merry-go-round, an erotic Sunday school teacher, a dance band of hip Jews disguised as Italians so they can play the St. Veronica’s Gig, or a pure-hearted girl in the confessional. Whatever, and whoever, the stories capture all the life there is in beautiful and surprising forms.
—James Hazard, The Milwaukee Journal

Jack Pulaski writes convincingly about so many different cultures it is hard to pigeonhole him. Readers will have a hard time finding a greater variety of characters in a collection of short stories.
—Jim Spencer, Chicago Tribune

These eight connected pieces conjure the world of Russian, Polish, Italian and Caribbean immigrants in New York tenements in the 1940s and ’50s. The writing is dense, sensual, often hilarious and entirely confident; the characters are real, with sights, sounds and smells crowding the page.
—Michael Upchurch, The Seattle Times

The St. Veronica Gig Stories, by Jack Pulaski [Cloth]

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